the that's all that it's. something that's me express. my guest today is the director of that movie he's also a three time academy award winner whose films have been nominated for thirty one oscars most notably platoon born on the fourth of july j.f.k. and nixon he's without a doubt one of the most controversial and influential filmmakers of our time and that's why i'm very pleased to be joined by producer director oliver stone thank you so much for joining me for having staged a great pleasure so wall street is a film that challenge people to rethink human nature one of the most notable lines of the movie greed is good what was your original message about that line and how do you feel looking back twenty five years later at the relationship between wall street and our government. don't get me started you know my father was in wall street so i grew up republican conservative in new york city and my life and underwent a lot of changes and by the time i was thirty five forty years old i was rethinking everything and i had a chance to go back and visits my dad's world of wall street from what i knew from

the fifty's and sixty's but it completely changed in the eighty's and there was a new breed of banker investment trader shark that had come into the pool and was devouring some of the smaller fish the emphasis being on money not on serving the client not on helping the economy the idea is getting it all you know you could for yourself. and that gene. it was self evident there was a self destructive behavior about wall street the laws started to deregulate the computers brought on a new speed and volume so gordon gekko was a conglomeration of people that we met and michael douglas portrayed it was slick charm and apparently it attracted a lot of young people to go to work on wall street the film was a surprise hit surprise. you know because an arcane movie about this is the numbers it doesn't necessarily appeal to the movie going audience. twenty years later i

went back for money never sleeps the sequel to wall street goes out come out of jail michael that is out of jail and the wall street that i found was even crazier it was far greater than i had remembered in the eight years that i was stunned millions of dollars were now trains. and again the banks the now the banks were deeply involved as you know it in trading and making profits for themselves as opposed to the economy or for their for the year for their clients so the world has gotten more topsy turvy and wall street more irresponsible my father would write about. you know wall street could be considered an animal unto itself it has no loyalty to any country it only has a loyalty to capital and capital will move around the world as need be to make money so all of your decorated vietnam war veteran and some of your films born of the fourth of july platoon are among the most prolific antiwar films in american

cinema what parallels do you draw to the afghanistan war which is now surpassed the longest american war the torch it parallels because vietnam as a young soldier it was very much they were not wanted we didn't feel wanted we felt that they were taking us for our money that the vietnamese was happy to see us because we meant prosperity we had good speech aerial goods we had p.x. as we had cash and i think that there was a false loyalty and i think very much that afghanistan as in iraq is the same story over and over where white men go to intervene in third world nations. it's always a hoax but come on give us the money and the corruption is rampant and of course they have changed sides and there's no there's no long term interest the vietnamese foreign minister said you know americans will leave yet no good no stays in afghanistan stays against iraq stays we have not done well. with interventions

anywhere but we continue to be an empire you know we have eight hundred plus spaces she has some of the very secret and we have created a huge infrastructure global infrastructure we're trying to be the world's policeman seems like american cinema has changed now a lot of films are just glorifying war i mean even even movies like hurt locker now at zero dark thirty it just seems like there's no more critiquing the empire critiquing american foreign policy like your movies were why why are war movies more angry i think one of the essences of the first movie i did the platoon movie which took ten years to me there was a very eloquent section about you know well defoe willem dafoe asks you know why are we fighting this war i used to believe it i don't anymore i think that we all became those of us who thought about what we're doing to do it i began to doubt. and your you're right about this about mindless triumphalism because of the soviet empire fell i think about nine hundred ninety one and from that point on the united

states start to act as if it was a unilateral player in the world and it was there was a in the movies you see sergeant private we're saving private ryan you see. pearl harbor you see blackhawk down and you see this is worship of the greatest generation as well as the technical logical all of our machinery our helicopters analogy you know i'm surprised in this hurt locker you say you see a lot of the there's no judgment about why we're in iraq yeah and in this new movie i gather you know it is about our technological. slickness it's not about the morality of whether you're going into other countries to kill or kidnap people do you think it's an element of self-censorship in the kind of a post nine eleven world and cinematic self-censorship in the sense of self love i think i think that america is very. because of the of the uncertain. yes of the ninety's to terrorism and so forth and the concept of the

globalization that we wanted badly on the capital is. that we've lost sight of the home military it takes to be in our position we have to go we came out of world war two the richest most prosperous country and. we built up a national security state over those seventy years and next to none on earth ever not the roman empire the british empire has ever been so big we don't even know how big. militarily but unfortunately the thought process that goes into studying history and knowing what what how this came to be has been lost which is why your series is so crucial for you are going to agree with the the blind worship of military patriotism i mean we all have a mother we all have a sense of country and i believe in a military to defend your country but i don't believe you're in the military to conquer the world right absolutely one of your most groundbreaking films my

favorite film has been your portrayals of former presidents and j.f.k. . it's arguably the most accurate historical representation of what happened even more so the film for a report i mean there's a scene in the film where joe passé is saying you know the mob have covered up the investigation could the mob have deterred really blocked this evidence i mean it seems like you know a lot of people think that the mob was complicit the assassination but really this movie kind of lays bare that there is some sort of criminal call that was in part responsible for j.f.k.'s assassination do you bear in mind the chip character described at the time in one thousand and one as a counter myth sure the myth of the warranties are. these are my conclusions based on a huge amount of research but we cannot ever prove anything in that movie practically because there's been so much blur you know the facts so much disappearance the autopsy among them the the bullets. concept of fingerprints all the chain of

evidence was lost the walls interrogation was lost if so it's a huge mess and not of that this is i do believe this is what happened or something similar to it is you cannot kill a president like that it was a complicated and bush is done in a very methodical scientific way but. i've been fighting on that front but i'm not saying that was a movie and i accepted that it was a movie but when we did this new thing this untold history of the united states this is a documentary this is ten hours and it's based on facts have been checked and checked again you can and you can dispute your interpretations and we go to the kennedy murder but the kennedy murder is part of a larger whole of what was kennedy doing i always ask that question of the movie what was kennedy's motive to kill him what what what did what was the difference between kennedy and johnson these are the key questions i just can't help but think after seeing that movie where did this criminal component go if it really wasn't working though the military industrial complex which we for which we think is

involved in the murder that's still around very much so it's grown enormous we have another beast in the united states it's just we have the united states we have another country living side by side with it it's called the pentagon and there's just no controlling it it's gone out of hand it's forty percent of our budget it goes to intelligence security and military. and there's also wall street which is another beast which has its own ethic so i think we'll see three countries living side by side tentacles reaching far. all over let's talk about next and your portrayal of nixon was that he was a criminal i mean a serious portrayed as this evil entity almost the supernatural entity or you know one point the movie the director of the cia is even threatening to kill nixon what do you say to people who say that you were too forgiving of bush and your movie w but i don't see that in nixon that the cia director tried to kill dick said we would that we had to that there was a controversy between helms richard helms and knicks. and part of the problems was

the cuban papers and what you are it's a dirty story the cia was we nicknamed sometimes capitalisms invisible army goes back to the one nine hundred forty seven and its creation in the anti-communist red scare and the cia has misused its mandate for so long still it's in the in with a drone attack it has its own drones now and it's targeted assassinations it's essentially i've always regarded the cia as a criminal organization of sort of like a mafia operating inside the us government scaring presidents because they have separate information and it's the same time they they've been battered they've lost the pentagon has taken over a lot of the old cia activities with and j. sock joint special operations command it's become almost an equivalent to the cia invisible army. you ask about w w it was a nightmare for me and personally as a documentary that we use we get to an untold history but mr bush jr was the

ultimate everything that could go wrong could go wrong after two thousand it was him everything that happened to it two thousand and eleven was misinterpreted and rendered bigger and more hysterical but it's still he was part of a process that had seemed to have been accelerating anyway the process of militarizing the plan bush did it badly obama does it a lot better. so the movie that you made that you say i was too sympathetic to i was never sympathetic to i was empathetic the difference is drama test i am a dram it's in that case i'm not making a documentary i did a movie in which we walk in his shoes we we understand how this not very deep thinking man who resembles harry truman in my mind a bit becomes president because he's the son of a president and his drives are very simple to me and i think there's a human in the film at the same time a little bit of heart quite a bit of heart. but it's not because i like. the big birds but i'll be right back

much more with oscar winning to go all over stone next. wealthy british scientists on some time to explain. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on. morning news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the

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so you guys just heard me talk the prolific oliver stone about his film trajectory clearing some of the most important cinematic masterpieces of our time and now he and his story and peter because nick are seeking to push the envelope once again this time through a ten part showtime series called the untold history of the united states check it out. i mean i want to make it as exciting as it. takes the history so we make it illegal but we are. always so there's a disconnect let's officially reported what actually happened that we can accept

the substance handed down. so to talk about the series and why it's so important to revisit american history through an alternate lens i'm joined now by award winning film director oliver stone along with historian and professor at american university her cousin and her both the creators of the series and the authors of its accompanying book the untold history of the united states thank you so much for coming on so i saw most of the series already it is mind blowing and courage everyone to check it out and i want to bring up the main pillar of the series being relevant with the anniversary of pearl harbor last week the the dropping. two nuclear bombs on japan you know growing up and my education that's the end of the chapter we drop the bombs the war was over we want to believe that's where i grew up that's the founding myth my children had three of them went to school went to high school and got the same story we had to finish the war they were fanatics and we'd just save american lives. the idea was if we didn't. united states would have

had to invade we would have lost truman says in his memoir he was told a half million men would have died in the invasion and he had no choice but to drop it. that's not the end of the story for us that's the beginning of the story and it's the beginning also mythology and the soviets are invading japan that's the other side of the court and the soviet invasion is what really terrifies the japanese and the bomb is being dropped to basically said the message to the russians in a new ballgame and the world war two we're no we're no longer going to make a long story short but truman has a different strategy that roosevelt ever dreamed of and that's a strange disconnect we get into that too because of the wall of semi wallace was a vice president who got bumped off the ticket in forty four allowing for truman to get in there it's a great story and that's that's why you say why history because the past is prologue we'll hear much about wallace. let's back up and explain i think we buy

the book too quickly the americans knew truman knew he said that the main reason he was going to potsdam was to make sure that stalin and the russians came into the war because the intelligence kept saying that the thing that the japanese dreaded the most finally break the japanese back was the soviet entry into the war and so he said to the war on august ninth three days after the bombing of hiroshima and then the second bomb before the soviets have a chance for the japanese have a chance to respond to the soviet invasion and what that's what great the difference the united states had already shown that it could wipe out japanese cities we wiped out one hundred japanese cities. but what changed the equation was the soviet entry which meant now the japanese military strategy was going to be bankrupt and their diplomatic strategy trying to get the soviets to get them better surrender terms was bankrupt that's what led to the end of the war but we knew that in advance that was going to have the effect. of dropping the atomic bomb six out of seven of america's five star officers generals and admirals who got their fifth

star during world war two are said that the atomic bomb was morally reprehensible militarily unnecessary and douglas macarthur general macarthur says that if we had told the japanese they could keep the emperor they would have surrendered in may we don't think we think that's a bit of an exaggeration but the atomic bomb was not necessary and in fact it is so central to the cold war sending a message to the soviet union and it's exactly how stalin interpreted it and stalin generals interpreted it that they were really the target because the soviets knew better than anybody that the japanese were trying to surrender and they're trying to surrender that this always get the better surrender terms so for their mind it was not only gratuitous but it was a it was so gratuitous that they said the united states was ruthless enough to do anything to get its way and that this was a warning to the soviet union at that point i think another aspect of world war two history is the deaths another aspect of learning about world war two and history books is the proportionality you know the u.s.

sacrificed so much i wanted to play a really important part of the series right now. it was over sixty to sixty five million people. including a list of maybe twenty seven million soviets between ten and twenty million chinese six million jews over six million jews. three million jewish. two million japanese. and one in the. streets of britain france italy hungary romania and the united states each county between the . what a million and a half million dead. the disproportionality this is stunning i really didn't even know the magnitude of those deaths before i saw that was really incredible i may completely shatters the misconceptions that we have growing up about we all did i mean we had no merican we still think america won the war d.-day and on june sixth

forty four but the war was was well on its way to being what the soviets had broken the back of the german military in the east in russia and selling proud of that curse then they were moving at that time we led to the d.-day they were moving. through eastern europe the momentum it shifted the germans watched far more men on the eastern front six to waterson like that than they ever lost in the west. besides that it sets up a whole the whole concept of what world war two was because that we don't ever take into account the role of the british empire which controlled a large part of the world the richest resources prior to world war two so as to i mean i see your america stood like me i mean we were lost in this mythology from the beginning of our lives on which like the bomb was necessary we won world war two if you were as a guy we have this right to police the world because we won that war on none of these above are true we don't reason we have the right is because we have the might because we have the atomic bomb and we led all the way through the entire arms race with the soviets we lead by by sometimes by large margins sometimes by less margins

but we maintain this grip of this. dominion over the world and now we've moved into another era with space and cyber warfare we control call it they call full spectrum dominance if you like that terminology but essentially we are. a war machine and we have a huge investment in. in an industry that we can't control. and i agree that a perfectly at the united states military of the world but that eight hundred to one thousand basis. now if at all these i can carrier groups we were weaponized in space russia and china have been bullied for trying to prevent the weaponization of space and the united states is ignoring that sometimes the vote in the united nations is everybody in the world against one against the united states. and i think space now we and israel and sometimes israel hasn't even thought it actually

and sometimes the marshall islands to get the united states basically stands alone on these things and we're spreading this we spend so much on our military so much our base is forty percent of the budget but what upsets us the perhaps the most is that we think that we have the psychological right as americans do that see what i think the whole debate is wrong between romney and obama between all this bipartisan foreign policy about how strong we should be and can we get stronger and stronger wiser than anybody outside this mindset and asking what is the path away from global control why can we not join the world and be a peaceful cooperative member of a. global perspective with a global history that we belong together as one planet especially with the climate threat is upon us so this is what's lacking in our schools you know i think. we have what they call american exceptionalism at the root of our heart we look at the flag and we think that's the greatest flag that ever existed that people are dying

to come here and that we are the greatest this is a very i think on the healthy mindset that's the conventional wisdom and docketed those are the atom bombs we hurt that war because you think so doesn't nothing lasts in history that we go six empires fell in the twentieth century there's bound there were no empire can last except through we may maintain a military dominion which is probable because of our space edge over the next twenty thirty years but think about the spiritual tyranny that's within what happens to. citizenry dominated world and one of the things that henry wallace warned about in nineteen forty five and one hundred forty six if we treat the russians betrayed the soviets so brutally now when we've got the bomb and we've got all the power how are they going to respond when they get perhaps we have to think about that same thing with the chinese the national intelligence council report that just came out this week says that by twenty thirty china is going to have the

biggest economy in the world not the united states but china that china is going to be moving toward military parity at some point this is our chance to get it right with china and stead of this pacific pivot that we have now hillary clinton wrote that article in foreign policy magazine titled america's pacific century that the united states is going to pivot toward asia now in order to control china if that's the mentality that when the chinese become more power with the united states how are they going to treat us i mean this is our chance actually to have a pivot a very good kind of pivot by creating a broader world community that includes the chinese rather than saying that they are somehow the enemy who we've got to contain or there is a broader breakdown it's not just china versus the u.s. i mean that's kind of an american fantasy about like again you know you think about regional powers that all come on and start to revolt against essentially a tyranny will the u.s. let's say brazil india and turkey. and as well all these they have

these countries are rich in resources and they are regional powers and it makes sense for them to to resist the u.s. feels that the more we can impose our will through our ways of doing business the people will see that it's the right way doesn't work that the people don't have the same values that we as we know from the george bush you're either with us or against. us. we grow up learning how to manage the empire without questioning whether or not we actually need one. that's right and obama by the ways very good at it i think he's a bleriot and i'm sure the great when he looks of the camera he was i will keep this country strong we are going to be indispensable nation he repeats it. but it's a very good salesman and unfortunately we're out of time it was absolute honor pleasure to have both of them on i really encourage i want to check out the untold

history of the united states absolutely groundbreaking work really important for everyone to see it in this country thank you i appreciate it. you're. telling her. that the good speech. she took place. her. her wish i. asked her to slum it sleazy a good. thing. look at

least see. it in. the trunk of my mind i'm a fairly. good. sleep . do we speak your language i mean some of the will not advance. news programs and

documentaries in spanish matters to you breaking news a little tonnage of angles kidney's stories. you hear. detroit all teach spanish find out more visit. all tito it's. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin.